September 13, 2026 – the 15th Sunday after Trinity – Matthew 6:24-34
Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank You for all Your benefits, that You have given us life and graciously sustained us to this day: We
beseech You, do not take Your blessings from us; preserve us from covetousness, that we may serve You only, love and abide in You,
and not defile ourselves by idolatrous love of wealth, but hope and trust only in Your grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives
and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. 25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Dear Father in heaven, this is Your Word and these are Your words, “Sanctify us by the truth, Your word is truth.” Amen.
In the name of Him who is the provider of all our needs both great and small, dear fellow redeemed. As we gear up for another year filled with the nourishing goodness of God’s Word on this Rally Day, I would first like to say, happy New Year. Now, I know its not January 1, but Rally Day has a certain sense about it where we could compare it to the secular new year and the things associated with it. There is excitement for the possibility of what the new year has in store. The new year is often a time when we make new goals for the year, assess the successes and failures of the past year, and we recommit ourselves to those goals we failed to achieve in the past year as well as add new goals that fit the current season of our lives.
As is often the case with new years resolutions, they tend to make us feel a little guilty. Maybe you maintained a “healthy” diet for the first few months of new year’s resolutions but after your willpower wore off, you found yourself slipping back into the habits that make it impossible to lead a healthy lifestyle. Or maybe you had a goal of setting aside a certain amount of money each month until life happened and you were forced to fix or replace your car or you had a medical crisis which left you with a lot of bills. There are obviously many examples you could recall which at one time derailed your well thought out plans and goals. So, it is certainly true that sometimes life gets in the way of our predetermined plans. Most of our new year’s resolutions don’t exactly have a moral component to them and even though they aren’t completely separate from spiritual goals, most of our new years resolutions on the whole and for the most part are probably secular in nature, but they can effect spiritual admonitions which scripture gives us. If you are saving up for a large purchase you might be tempted to think that you must work on Sunday mornings in order to achieve your goals.
Or you might think that you need to exercise on the one morning a week that you have “nothing” or “just church” going on. Or you might think that you should cut your contributions to the church because of this thing for which you are saving money. And now all of the sudden our secular plans and goals are getting in the way of how the Christian is to live an ordered life according to God’s Word. In some ways, goal setting can set us up for failure, because we set
unrealistic goals or because our willpower is different now than it was at the beginning of the year. Sometimes failure happens and even with the gift of hindsight, there doesn’t seem to have been a way around that failure even though we tried hard to avoid it. Of course, not all goals have the same rate of failure. If you had a goal of saving an extra $10,000 for the year and only managed to save $5,000, would you really consider that a failure? You are
$5,000 more ahead than you were a year ago. If your goal was to lose 20 pounds but you only managed to lose 10 pounds would you consider that a failure? You are ten pounds lighter than you were a year ago. Shouldn’t you take the time to build on the successes you made instead of dwelling on the part you missed? Wouldn’t it make more sense to build on your successes than on your failures? That way you are much less likely to give up on achieving those goals in
the future.
Now, maybe you are beginning to wonder where I’m headed with all of this talk about new year’s resolutions, but then again maybe some of you have figured it out. And even though I’m hesitant to call the commandments and other scriptural admonitions resolutions, they can in fact be related to bettering our walk with our Father in heaven who sees all that we do. In hymn 510, the author summarizes the commandments in the following way,
“Fear and love thy God and Lord, And revere His name and Word, Holy keep
the Sabbath day, Honor to thy parents pay, Kill not, shun adultery,
Steal not, lies and slander flee, Keep from covetousness free. Help
me, Lord, I trust in Thee!”
Rally Day is a call to refocus our attention on God’s Word as the scriptural educational season begins anew. Sunday School, Bible Study, Confirmation Class, and Church Choir all resume. These avenues for participating in God’s Word not only include committing God’s Word to memory but letting it permeate your hearts and minds. Our hectic summer schedules have come to a close for the normal busyness of the rest of the year. Don’t let your failures this past year keep you from joining in the life of the church. Don’t let your failures keep you away from the hearing and studying of God’s Word. Don’t let your failures keep you from serving the church and by extension serving your neighbor in the ways in which you are able. Spiritually speaking, we should assess our failures and confess them knowing that our gracious Father in heaven is willing and ready to forgive our sins because Jesus paid the price for your sins on the cross. Remember that even though you have failed, your heavenly Father hasn’t kicked you out of His house, he has not prevented you from confessing your sins and receiving His forgiveness. Past sins should not be dwelt upon, because God remembers them no more. To him, they were like a fleeting vapor of smoke which quickly dissipates. And even if you have utterly failed to keep God’s Word a priority, every Sunday offers you the opportunity to start fresh, to confess your sins and receive His forgiveness like it was the first time. At a former congregation I served, there was an elderly member who was heartbroken every time she was admonished to hear the word of God and to take the study of it seriously because it wasn’t a lack of desire that kept her from attending church, she could no longer drive, she was losing her eyesight, and her countless aches and pains from her ailing health kept her from getting ready at a decent time in the morning, but she did regret that she was no longer able to gather with the people of God at God’s house even though she had very little control over her ability to be there. Don’t wait to be attentive to God’s word until your human capacities are failing. Now is the appointed time to immerse yourself with the Word of Life so that even when you get old, what you have learned cannot be taken away from you. Now is the time to recommit yourself to the study of God’s Word and the reception of His sacrament. Now is the time to be spiritually fed and nourished by the seemingly plain and simple word and sacrament which we will one day recognize as the choicest of pieces at the heavenly banquet. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things will be added unto you.”
Your heavenly Father knows that you need food and clothing, home and family, property and goods, and all that you need to support your body and life and as he cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, He will care even more so for those whom His only-begotten Son died to save. It’s ok to set goals for your life, but they shouldn’t get in the way of the “One Thing Needful.” As we recommit ourselves to the teaching and studying of God’s Word this year, seek to set spiritual goals which bring you to Jesus, which grow your faith and sanctified life, and these goals will keep the striving for daily bread in its proper sphere. Choose the better part and it will not be taken away from you. (Luke 10:42)